SINGAPORE RING 115 - Jun 2022 Magic Meeting Report
IBM Singapore Ring 115 held its second physical meeting for this year with 25 members and 2 guests in attendance. The meeting, themed “Children and Comedy Magic”, was hosted by Tan Jui Kuan aka JK Tan in the first half and Kenneth Chia in the second half of the evening. The venue was the Drama Center.
The host, JK Tan, cracked a joke about the study of a variety of birds and their characteristics.
Following up on this theme, Victor Heng spun a story about 3 bird owners, the 3 bird owners being 3 volunteers from the audience. Each of them chose a different colour light, leaving the last light to the performer. Victor was able to predict that he would be left with the white light. Each of the volunteers chose a playing card each and then buried it into the deck. Victor distributed the deck into a face-up pile and a face- down pile. The 3 chosen cards were not seen in the face-up pile. This pile was discarded and the face-down pile was redistributed into a face-up pile and a face- down pile. Once again, the 3 chosen cards were not found in the face-up pile. The process was continued until there was a pile of 3 face-down cards. They turned out to be the 3 chosen cards.
Thomas Yeo, together with some volunteers emulating him, folded a US dollar note several times. When unfolded, his note turned upside down, while all the volunteers’ notes remained right-side up. Next, he distributed sweets to 9 “stations” along the 3 arms of a triangle on the table. Each arm had a total of 13 sweets. A sweet was added to a “station” of the choice of a volunteer. Thomas redistributed the existing sweets along the 3 arms of the triangle, and surprising, each arm still counted a total of 13 sweets. Altogether, another 4 sweets were added one at a time, and each time, Thomas redistributed the existing sweets and each arm still managed to total 13 sweets!
Ng Kah King put several balloon balls inside a blown-up balloon tube. He made the tube into a sausage dog balloon and passed a long needle through without bursting the balloon. He changed a flower into a silk scarf and performed silk within silk. He then performed colour changing rings with 3 flurry rings and in the end, the 3 rings transformed into a large tri-coloured ring.
In his dealer show, Jeremy Pei presented his own version of the flurry colour- changing rings. He then demonstrated “Dream Ropes”, his version of Professor’s Nightmare, and shared his ideas on both the Invisible Deck and the Brainwave Deck. His final effect was Rubik’s Cube Svengali Book.
Cassidy Lee, who was in Singapore, demonstrated “Frank Test” (an ART positive to negative test effect), an empty Corona Beer bottle became a filled-up beer inside a paper bag, and the latest electronic Colour Match markers by Tony Anverdi.
After a 10-minutes break, Kenneth Chia took over as the MC.
Kenneth Chia did a paper-fold in which a ship turned into the Jumbo floating restaurant, and then into a sampan. He then cheekily pulled a rabbit from an empty hat and then a tiny hat from the rabbit. He performed a torn & restored Avengers Infinity War poster where the restored poster had several of the super heroes missing because they died in the movie. His final effect was Animal Tarot by the Other Brothers where the 9 animal cards that were not chosen formed a large picture of a rat, which was the freely selected animal card.
Alvin Terence performed his own version of Alexander Mash’s “Thy Will Be Done” where a tarot card predicted the exact time randomly set by a volunteer, and who got to keep the pen, and who, the coin.
John Teo was able to predict exactly not only which one of 3 imaginary Singapore coins would be chosen by a volunteer, but also whether it ended heads or tails up when it was spun imaginarily on the table. Recalling his childhood encounter with an elderly magician, he demonstrated a 4-card monte where he failed continuously several times to locate the King of Spades when the magician mixed it up with the other 3 Kings. It was finally revealed that the King of Spades had a different colour back as well as a large hole punched out in the middle of the card all along.
Jeremy Pei performed several classical routines including flowers from silk, McCombical Cards but using emoji cards, rope through neck, and lasso card.
Wee Kien Meng aka Mr Bottle did sponge rabbits with a volunteer where sponge rabbits jumped from hand to hand, and finally, the appearance of baby rabbits.
Michael Thiam, Yin Xiang’s guest, performed a series of interesting rubber band effects, including a green X within a yellow rectangle that switched colours with each other, forming different shapes with the rubber bands and weaving a story around them, and a rubber band star that became a star-shaped rubber band.
Kenneth Chia presented a flowing deck of cards, transformed a playing card into a genuine tea bag, and did a pocket version of Colour Match using a box of colour crayons instead of markers, with a “wardrobe” full of dressing items for a black and white outline drawing of a boy.
The evening ended with Ng Kah King and Chan Yow Tiong being the 2 lucky draw winners. It was another night of great fellowship and exciting magic item shopping.